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April 10, 2012

PNG Compressor 1.1

An update 1.1 is available for downloading in the Mac App Store. Special thanks to the people who helped me with beta testing.

After analyzing all user feedback from the last release, I did my best to meet all possible requirements. There are quite a lot of new features, so I'm going to review some of them.

Compression Queue

Last version included only one compression tool embedded. OptiPNG is a great console utility, but its compression method could work not very good for particular PNG images. So you reasonably asked to include optional tools. Unfortunately, some of the best utilities use GPL license. In other words, it is hard to deal with embedding these tools into the commercial app.

So I decided to provide ability to build your own list of compression tools, be it pngcrush, advpng or any other binary that can be executed in Terminal. Everything you need to make your own decent PNG compressor is in Preferences. Open the Queue tab to configure any number of terminal apps in any preferred way.

By default, there is only one “standard” executable optipng. Click the Add button to append another binary and configure its command line arguments. You can duplicate and reorder items to play with compression results until you find the best combination. I know it's a bit geeky, but we get unlimited options and total control on compression workflow.

Automatic compression

When you work on a project, it may contain graphics that you have to compress all the time. Drag and drop is easy but may become annoying. Version 1.1 provides a better way to deal with this. In the Advanced preference pane, you can choose a folder that should be tracked by PNG Compressor. Once this feature is enabled, all new PNG images that appear in that chosen folder will be compressed automatically.

Select ~/Desktop/ if you often take snapshots auto-stored on the Desktop. The app will watch for new images and handle them immediately. Later, you can select any other directory while you work with it or reset selection to disable any folder tracking.

Silent compression

Drag and drop experience is very important. When you drag an image into the Dock icon, PNG Compressor will display its user interface and start compression automatically. However, you may prefer to not see any progress windows while dealing with something else.

Now there is an option to disable auto-popup. Just drag your pic into the Dock icon and continue working in the recent app. Moreover, there is another option: the app can clear completed images automatically. Now we all set to make compression unobtrusive.

Thanks for your support!

I know there are many competitor apps that wrap console tools for image compression. Most of them are free. So I much appreciate your support of PNG Compressor. Its popularity driven by your amazing feedback surprised me to say at least. I hope the new version will make your workflow even faster and your apps even lighter.